August 8th, 2007, filed by Brad Dorfman
Hot weather might have been just the excuse for kids and parents to put off back to school shopping, at least in some parts of the country.
And that could bode ill for some retailers when they report July sales this week, analysts said.
Traffic patterns during the five weeks ended August 4 “showed substantial weakness in the South where hot weather pushed the lucrative back-to-school bounce further into August,” Richard Hastings, senior retail analyst at Bernard Sands, said.
Traffic in the Northeast and Midwest regions was better, but still down year over year.
Hastings said he will be watching Kohl’s, the off-mall, moderate priced department store retailer, to see if the middle-market consumer is still “in the game” and said he would need to see same-store sales up at least 2 percent there to feel comfortable.
Meanwhile, Planalytics, which monitors weather for businesses, said July actually was one of less extreme temperatures than last year, when the U.S. saw record heat.
Still, there were strong regional differences, with the interior West and Northern Plains seeing abnormally hot weather. Much of the Northeast and Upper Midwest was cooler and California, while seasonably warm, was cooler than last year, Planalytics said.
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on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Reuters Shop Talk, Text.
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